Katrina’s kids are sickest in the country

Children of displaced families from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are struggling with serious health problems, according to a new report released today by the New York-based Children’s Health Fund and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

The report focused on the medical records of 261 of the poorest children displaced by the hurricanes. These kids and their families were moved into a federally funded Baton Rouge trailer park until the park closed in May 2008. This is the first in-depth review of children’s medical and mental health after the storms in 2005 that struck the Gulf Coast and displaced thousands of families.

Forty-one percent of children under 4 years of age were diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia–twice the rate found in children in New York City homeless shelters and more than twice the Centers for Disease Control’s rate for high-risk minority

populations. More than half the kids had behavioral or learning problems. And 42 percent had respiratory infections and disorders that may be linked to formaldehyde and crowding in the ramshackle trailers supplied by the government.

These children are “the sickest I have ever seen in the U.S.,” Irwin Redlener, president of the Children’s Health Fund, told Newsweek. “As awful as the initial response to Katrina looked on television, it’s been dwarfed by the ineptitude and disorganization of the recovery.”

The study made many urgent recommendations. Among them: FEMA must provide contact information for these children so their medical needs can be treated and an extension in funding is necessary so these kids can receive further medical attention. Redlener told Newsweek that he’s optimistic that funds will be extended at least through mid-2010, since all that will require is “a stroke of the pen” from the new administration.